1. Technical Field
The present disclosure generally relates to querying databases. More particularly, and without limitation, the present disclosure relates to methods and systems for using a unified query language to query tag databases.
2. Related Art
A special type of databases called “tag databases” store various information including tags. A “tag” may be any piece of data, for example, a numerical value representing the size of a part in a manufacturing process. Using a conventional query language (e.g., SQL) to query a tag database has many disadvantages. For example, a conventional query language may not be temporal. That is, a conventional query language may not permit querying historical information and working with data that varies over time (i.e., time-dependent values). Furthermore, a conventional query language may not allow for feature discovery. Therefore, a user, an application, or a system may not be able to discover features, supported commands, and preset defaults from the database, but rather must resort to printed manuals, help files, etc. In addition, a conventional query language may not allow for “extensibility hooks.” That is, a convention query language may not permit adding or customizing commands and features. Moreover, a conventional query language can be very slow when operating with tag databases having large amounts of data. These and other disadvantages of a conventional query language create a need for an improved and uniform query language that supports tag databases more efficiently.